Just wondering which packs of presets/actions/filters etc. people use for Lightroom and or Photoshop? Which ones do you use and what do you use them for? Which are your favourites and are there any that are your "go to" one?

I have the Topaz bundle of filters for PhotoShop. Some of them are really quite good, some are just so-so. THey gave me an excellent deal on the bundle so the so-so ones are pretty much free. What I really like about them is that they are regularly updating the filters with new features and improvements, and the updates are all free to existing customers.

I wouldn't say that any of them are a go-to tool, but I do like to play around with them when I am trying to do something more stylized.

They've got a special on till the end of the month for the PROFX pack, which includes lots of presets and local adjustments, cross processing and film emulation presets - basically half price at 9.99 pounds UK.

If I can bother to fire up Lightroom, I do like to batch-do and save raws with lens distortion corrections; I invariably use my own web-output action in CS2. I use AutoFX filters for mono and do my own blends. Also for mono stuff I've saved a few tone-curve files as presets in CS2.

I am not totally OK with the use of Actions in photoshop and presets in Lightroom, although I use them myself. The thing is that I wonder sometimes whether the same procedure to ‘fix’ and enhance a particular image exactly suits a totally different photograph taken by someone else. While the validity of the idea is another discussion, I admit that using actions or presets are a time saving method. In my opinion if we make our own actions, then we can use them in our images of the same set quiet confidently.

I haven’t bought any commercial action products however I am using few freebie actions I found on internet and they are really pretty good. I will list down my favorites below.

1.Coffeeshop Baby PowderRoom2 Action.

This is a really cool action for new born photographs; in fact it’s not only for new born photos but for portraits in common. You can lighten skin, adjust skin glow, enhance eyes, brighten eyes etc. It really does save a lot of time and effort.

2. Coffeeshop Velvet Cream Action

This action adds a cool vintage-creamy look and I love the effect. I use this for portraits often, also to change the feeling of the photo.

As for the lightroom presets I use “PH The Weddings” preset, found free on internet. I don’t like some of the presets packed in the bundle but the “PH surreal effect” is interesting with few minor adjustments.

I may be going off piste a bit but I use OnOne photo suite 7 it is now very close to lightroom for being my favourite, especially for mono work it has so many effects more than you can shake a stick at. It intergrates with both PS & LR seamlessly and there are numerous training vids on the OnOne website.